1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for performing emulation processing and forming an image for each page on the basis of the processing result.
2. Description of the Related Art
When an image forming apparatus such as a printing apparatus receives a print job which cannot be interpreted even using a plurality of mounted emulations, it generally determines that it has received print data described in plain text. Then, the apparatus prints out all the received print data as plain text. This wastes recording materials, such as printing sheets or toner. The following technique has been known in order to avoid such a situation.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 9-188039 describes an apparatus where a determination as to whether an emulation of print data received by a printing apparatus can be interpreted by an emulation mounted on the printing apparatus and a selection of the emulation are performed in predetermined unit such as page or time. As compared with the case where a determination is conventionally made only at the time of starting printing, the determination and the selection are performed in a predetermined unit, so that the printing apparatus can eliminate the waste of printing sheets etc., and can normally print out the print data possibly.
However, the technique is directed at avoiding selection error of an emulation among emulations mounted on the image forming apparatus. In this technique, for example, when the image forming apparatus receives print data described in a non-mounted page description language, an image which a user does not intend is formed, and recording media such as printing sheets or recording materials such as toner are wasted as conventionally.
Therefore, since an image which the user does not intend is formed as a result of the interpretation of the print data by the emulation different from the emulation of the print data, there is a need for an image forming apparatus capable of avoiding the waste of recording media for forming an image and recording materials such as toner.